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Originally Posted by iggy_oi
Not surprising? The league is trying to get out of a signed agreement under the terms of which they have already signed players to contracts which were structured around those conditions.
Why do the players need to be held accountable for the league’s poor decisions? No one forced the league to agree to that language and I’m still baffled they would agree to something so short sighted.
For arguments sake let’s say a lot has changed since the MOU was signed, has that much changed since the start of free agency? Had the league brought this up prior to free agency I think the players would be much more receptive, instead this probably feels like a bait and switch to them, and rightfully so.
You’re comparing apples to oranges unless the language regarding paragraph 17 explicitly stated that it was only a tentative agreement.
It’s not that simple for the players, and the owners know this.
A player has to consider whether the percentage of their salary that they’ll make this season is worth the risk of injury or illness, especially for players on expiring contracts playing on bad teams or inline for an increase.
Imagine being on the last year of a deal paying you $2.5M/season playing for a non playoff team, your last 5 seasons you’ve increased your point totals year over year and are likely to get a roughly $5M/year longer term contract. Is it really worth risking getting injured or having a really off year and losing $0.5-1M per season on your next contract for the under $2M paycheque this season? I get that an argument could be made that the same player would weigh the same pros and cons even if their salary weren’t being reduced but what I’m saying is the league is giving a lot more incentive to the players to do so. Not just monetarily but also from a collective bargaining perspective, the PA are not going to want to open the door for the league to arbitrarily change the terms of an agreement.
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I for one am not assigning blame at all.
But we are where we are.
The league can't possibly be healthy and manage the contract load of a salary cap based on $5B as an industry.
So the players can say forget it, you signed a deal and you need to stick to it, and there's nothing wrong with that.
But 72% of salaries won't go well when I see the league heading for something like 36% of revenue.
That can certainly be the owner's issue to manage until escrow pushes the issue to the players, but they do risk two things with that stance.
1) the owners saying we're not going to have a season then.
2) teams folding and jobs lost.
It's not as simple as holding to an agreement, or who's fault it is.